The Deceptive Quality of Hope
by NoTimeTeen
Summary: Johanna Mason goes to live at District 12, where all the victors she could care about now dwell. There are ulterior motives involved, though. Hope, most of all. Hope for... Katniss. '...the day should be sad now that I'm not at Seven, but I'm now where the only hope I have is...' Eventual Johanna/Katniss.
1. Chapter 1

**So. This is one of the stories I'd already posted before, once here (deleted it), and once in Archive Of Our Own, where I felt it looked much nicer. Anyway. I'm not writing anything at the moment, I'm bored, and I'm looking for inspiration in order to finish this particular story, so I'll be checking its chapters, correcting whatever needs correcting, and posting them here over the next couple of weeks. There's this one chapter, then another four, I think. If by the time I post the last one I haven't yet started writing further, it'll probably mean that I've given up. In the meantime, however, you're free to read the chapters, review if you feel like it, and wait for the next ones to come, if you want. This may not be the most groundbreaking story or anything, but it is, in my own opinion, one of my better-written ones.**

 **Without further ado—**

 _ **Enjoy!**_

* * *

 **Chapter I.**

Johanna Mason climbed out of the hovercraft feeling as if, indeed, she didn't know where she was at the moment. That was, of course, untrue. She knew perfectly well where she was — District 12. The faded Twelve. Being this the very first time she'd seen it — or, at least, the first time she'd seen anything beyond the now non-existent Justice Building — , she couldn't help but let a certain amount of air filter through her lips as it escaped her in the form of a sigh.

She had suspected something like this would happen to her — the dissociative feeling, that is. She had been told in numerous occasions how green it all was — or had been — around the town that composed Twelve. The fences away north of her and what peeked through the lines of wire and above it were proof enough that all those rumors were true. Thick foliage escalating over gigantic lumps of earth in a natural staircase that only birds were able to fully appreciate. The closest stretch faded down a bend in the distance only to let a few more covered mountains rise into view. Arbitrary melodies built one over the other in a concert of animal voices reached Johanna's ears and threatened to make the already overwhelming feeling grow to uncontrollable extents.

It smelled like Johanna's home. Too many types of trees and herbs came to mind when she inhaled, mixed with a few other unfamiliar scents; all of them hidden slightly under the lingering smell of smoke, coal and fire — and blood, she was unfortunate enough to discover. Blood and dead bodies. That faint smell of putrefaction made her grimace.

The ensemble of stimuli that involved her senses brought a numb sensation to her head. This wasn't just home. The climate, its coldness — fresh air so similar to the one she was fond of, and yet so similar as well to the one she feared, the one that still haunted her sleep more often than not.

She was taken back years into the past: to violent images and painful screams; to the sight of fresh blood flying through the air and down to splatter all over her face, to stain way more than just her body. And she dreadfully remembered what every morning she tried to make herself forget. _I'm a victor,_ she thought. _I survived thanks to the deaths of twenty-three others._

That thought, as it happened to her every time it crossed her head, threw Johanna completely off-balance. It was ironic, in a way, that all those that knew her immediately assumed she was immune to the grief attached to the memories every former tribute inevitably acquired while at their Games. However, countless were the nights she spent awake and at the verge of a nervous breakdown provoked by the most recent round of nightmares — as was known to be a standard suffering among the living victors.

'You okay, ma'am?' asked behind her the plain rebel soldier that had accompanied her from District 7.

'I'm fine, yeah,' she answered quickly, rather startled. She appreciated the slight change in uniforms the new regime had introduced to its soldiers, but she couldn't help feeling uneasy whenever one of them approached; most were silent like this one, and that ability added to the dull grey of their clothes that combined so well with the color of the inside of the hovercraft made their unnatural stealth unsettling. At least with the now-extinct Peacekeepers she was always aware of their presence, what with the heavy boots and the white uniforms.

'Know your way 'round?'

'I'll figure it out, thanks.' Johanna blew some air out of her and stepped away from the vehicle to be safe from being swallowed into a turbine.

With a loud whistling the hovercraft took off, turned south and disappeared from view.

Johanna sighed deeply, looking around. She had consulted a few old maps of the place guessing that, if she was planning to be here for a prolonged stay, she might as well have some notion of where things were.

Away to her right was an apparently new wired fence, probably erected to prevent wild creatures from coming into the populated area. A tall pile of rusty metal and splintered pieces of wood rose a few feet into the opposite side, giving off a very ominous air to the atmosphere. The earth beneath Johanna's feet was a dark shade of brown, and it felt soft, muddy, moist from recent raining.

'Hey, kid!' A black-haired, grey-eyed man ran into the clearing where Johanna stood from a nearby makeshift house. 'You can't be here,' he said as he approached. 'You have any idea where you're standing?'

The man had stopped at the edge of the circle of mud where she was, and was wearing the sort of expression Johanna would expect to see in the face of a bossy mother about to scold her children.

Glowering at him, she said, 'On some sort of a sacred puddle, perhaps?'

Surprise ran over his features. 'Well,' he hesitated, moving his eyes up and down Johanna, 'this happens to be the tomb of most of my dead friends, so in a way yes. It is a sacred puddle.'

That explained the smell.

Now Johanna felt embarrassed. Blushing furiously, she stepped quickly toward the nameless man and apologized.

'It's okay,' he said, his eyes now noticing the shortness of her hair. 'You don't seem to be from around here.' Johanna confirmed this by saying she had just been delivered. 'Delivered, huh?' His mouth curved upward in amusement. 'Well, ma'am, next time you could ask whoever "delivered" you to choose more wisely where to put their packages.'

'There's no packages', Johanna answered, beginning to feel annoyed. 'Just me.'

The man frowned as a spark of recognition flashed through his face. 'Hey,' he said, 'I think I know you.'

'Believe me, you don't.' Johanna added, 'I look like a lot of people.' She tried to look away from him when she spoke next, though; she wasn't in any mood for giving out autographs. 'You know how can I get to the Victor's Village?'

The man instructed her, still trying to get a clear glimpse of her complete face. When he was finished Johanna thanked him, apologized again and started walking before he could think of any other questions to make.

As she made her way down the road — or, at least, down what at some point must have been a road — Johanna gazed painfully away from everything she placed her eyes on. Houses without roofs, houses without walls, houses without houses; they lined the path at every side. And amid the chaos there were people crying or trying to move boulders of fallen cement out of their way to free more dead bodies, or simply to have the place they used to call home back to normal. For a second she felt a small smile stretching her features at the sight of a group of seven-or-so year-olds skip around laughing, until she noticed they were skipping around inside a fifteen-feet-wide crater.

It made her feel sad, the amount of destruction that was exposed. The coldness and cruelty with which the Capitol had exterminated a whole District as if it was filled with vermin. Moments like this were the ones that made her feel good about the fact that Snow and all his people had now been killed; but, as always, the feeling also carried its fair amount of regret over the fact that so many other innocents — from both sides — had given their lives to pay for what now was generally assumed as a 'well-deserved peace'.

Johanna thought of Finnick, of Prim, of all the other soldiers she'd known while training at Thirteen and that were no more. She thought of what they did to her at the Capitol — and felt a shudder run through her whole body. Then she remembered, hadn't they done the same to her at Thirteen? What made them any better? Supposedly, the exam had been designed to target her individual weaknesses, but under what circumstances would a street be flooded with water in the Capitol? Johanna still asked herself that whenever she remembered — she could never come up with an answer.

No. This peace wasn't well deserved.

It took her a long time to reach anything she could identify from her analysis of the maps she'd looked up. When she finally did it was simply because the road she'd been following came out to an open space, a perimeter of destroyed buildings all facing the square. The remains of what must have been the biggest building once marked the place where the Justice Building used to stand. The space inside the square had been cleaned, though, and the only thing that was remarkable was a large black circle right at the middle of it — the place where bodies had been burned, Johanna thought, or where the torture devices that surely stood here had been burned, anyway. Back at her own District those things had been left untouched, right at the middle of the square — so that people remembered, they had said. Johanna thought they were just sadistic.

The place was empty. Johanna felt a sort of external sadness, as if the place itself was sad of what had become of it. Opposite to her and across the square she thought she recognized a big oven, probably the place where Peeta used to bake. And inside all the other mutilated structures she identified several different devices or features that told the story of what the locals used to go there to get. There were wooden crates in one place, where they used to stack fruits and vegetables, Johanna was sure, and in other she could see a thick metal door that enclosed what must have been a cold room to preserve meat.

She walked ahead with her eyes firmly set on the ground, determined not to read the story all this destruction was telling her; this account of anonymous murders and indifferent killings. And she was relieved when she started up the narrow path that connected the Victor's Village with the square. It was a quiet, hidden place, discreet enough so that she started feeling the safety that only solitude provided her with. Only then did she realize how anxious she had been since she had climbed down of the hovercraft. No, since before that; long before that. Since she came out of her house, way back in District 7, when she saw the hovercraft appear out of thin air and land outside. Her shoulders had tensed when she went out to greet the silent soldiers that were supposed to guard her from whatever might happen — needlessly, of course. There was no one now who would want to start a war, and if there was, they wouldn't want to kill her; they wouldn't need to step into Seven, when the ones that were worth something lived here, at Twelve.

Johanna let the sensation fill her, feeling warm and happy again. She kept telling herself the reason why she decided to come in the first place was because she craved the company, and because the company she would find here was the one she needed; but in reality what she craved the most was this — the solitude. It made her remember the nice talks with Finnick and the days she spent with her family before they were all killed; the pleasure she got out of training with her axes in her backyard, or of the breeze that would hit her face every other afternoon if she stood in just the right place before the fence that enclosed the Victor's Village at Seven.

She stopped and for a minute considered a particularly green patch of grass a few feet to the side of the path. Seriously resisting the urge to lay down there for the rest of the day, she forced her feet to keep moving.

They were waiting for her.

Her expectations were pretty low. President Paylor had been urging her to make up her mind about where she wanted to live, but had assured her that, wherever she chose to stay, she would be able to live the rest of her life without having to earn a living unless she wanted to.

'You're a war hero,' she had said. 'Without you there wouldn't be peace now. The whole world owes you, Johanna.'

Johanna realized at some point that with the war now over no one really knew what to do with the surviving victors. They weren't supposed to be important anymore, because they were the legacy of what the past regime forced its population to do; they were the living proof that the Capitol held such power over the people that it could make a bunch of teenagers become murderers and then be awarded for it. In a way they were now seen as a shameful reminder of the past.

Johanna thought all that was pretty hypocritical. Maybe she had killed people in order to survive, but she didn't remember any of those who now accused her of yielding to the will of a sadistic government jumping out of line to defend her. As a matter of fact, one of the reasons why she had decided to come to Twelve instead of staying at Seven was because she remembered how they all celebrated and watched attentively every year to see what happened at the Games. Now, though, they remembered all those years with shame, regret and indignation, stating every few weeks through the media and broadcasting it live all over the country how cruel and ruthless Snow had been and how he had corrupted and brainwashed a whole number of generations by forcing them to watch the now disgusting Games.

She didn't lie to herself. She wasn't like everybody else. She remembered how there were at least three Games which she actually enjoyed. Right after she turned thirteen and had mostly resigned herself to the fact that this was the world she lived in, it was as if what she was watching wasn't real people; as if what was on the screen was a number of people reenacting the sort of romantic stories her mother used to tell her at night of the war heroes and whatnot. They were just actors. And thinking like that she felt, by the time she was fifteen, that maybe at some point she would be able to watch it without feeling disgusted of being human.

Then came her Games, and all that she was, all that she wanted and all that she had achieved in her mental and personal landscape that could be considered an achievement crumbled to the ground. They tore her apart. They made her do things she didn't believe herself capable of doing. But then again, she wanted to survive. The moment she climbed into the train after she was reaped she had promised herself she would do all she could to go back to her family.

It broke her. The Games broke her. With her escort and stylist Johanna had schemed one of the best strategies in the history of the Games — to be weak and pathetic so that the other tributes would ignore her until the very last minute. No one knew she had an amazing ability with the axe — in all its varieties — due to her father; the man was obsessed with not losing a child to the cruelty of the Capitol and had instructed his sons and daughter on how to use it. As soon as one fell in her hands her cover was blown off, along with most of who she was. The last five or so tributes died at the mercy of her axe.

Johanna still visualized some nights the hovercraft that appeared right after she was announced victor. Both the hovercraft and the sky had looked red through the layer of blood that partially covered her eyes. And though she had come back to her happy family it was never the same. They weren't the same and neither was she. Nothing felt the same anymore.

The only thing she couldn't bring herself to appreciate of her solitude was how much it put her to think. Six years had now passed since she won her Games; and if she thought things had changed after she had returned to her house, she only needed looking at where she was now to comprehend that that change had been nothing compared to what the last year had brought.

In the distance she saw how the tall houses came into sight from behind a hill as she walked. They were untouched; they hadn't even heard the bombs that had fallen not a mile away. The dull color of everything around here reflected the mood of all the inhabitants of the Village. The grass of the gardens was covered in ash, as were the roofs and walls of all twelve houses; the flowers were dead, and it seemed like this was the only place around the whole district that was contoured by fence and forest but to which no birdcall or animal grunt came in.

The only color that stood out under the sun was the bright yellow of a large bush located at the side of a house to her right. Johanna approached it curiously. The bush looked scragglier the closer she got until finally she was looking down at the sad picture of faded flowers about to die. Several bent buds had picked a rather brown and sick taint, and the few ones that were about to bloom were facing slightly downwards, their thin stems painfully folded under the weight they had to support.

The whole impression Johanna got of such sight was one of utter depression.

A particularly nasty brown bud rose above all others right at the middle of the bush, as if showing off the fact that the ugliness of what could be beautiful was started at its very own root; it was bent also, up there where it stood, in such an angle that it almost appeared to be pointing at Johanna.

That evil bud disgusted her. It made her think of all that was good in the world and that was obscured always by the bad stuff.

'Up here where I am,' she imagined it was saying, 'I'm able to prevent all the potential of this world to be reached.'

She felt like gagging, and she probably did once or twice as she turned away, her mind once more flooded with the unholy images that were her past. She retraced her steps and stood in the middle of the green to which all the houses faced. Bending over, she placed her hands on her knees as she had done a while ago and tried to regain her breath.

Her eyes closed. She tried to imagine what the world would be if people weren't evil, if Snow hadn't turned them all into sadistic, hypocritical perverts; if the brown bud on top of that bush wasn't there. The yellow would bloom powerfully, she was sure. Neighbors would take care of each other's gardens and compliment whoever went by in front of their houses. They wouldn't be picking up the pieces of their beloved from what remains of the place where they grew up, they would be talking excitedly about where to spend their next summer, about what to eat tomorrow morning. Teenagers would be speaking in hushed voices to the ones they loved, planning together what would become of the family they both cherished. Husbands and wives would be trying to decide what to name their children.

The heels of her hands dug the tears out of her eyes. She inhaled heavily for a few minutes, repeating mentally the lines she had been advised by her head doctor to repeat whenever she felt like this. _My name is Johanna Mason. My home is District 7_ — 12, District 12, she stopped herself.

'Johanna Mason. District Twelve,' she muttered slowly. Her mouth kept moving, voicing the words as her chest relaxed in response to her efforts to slow down its movement. 'District Twelve,' she finished.

* * *

 _ **Review!**_


	2. Chapter 2

_**Enjoy!**_

* * *

 **Chapter II.**

The front door of the house with the flowers opened. Johanna watched as Peeta Mellark exited and turned her way, his expression serious. He lifted his head and saw her, then blinked a couple of times not believing what he was seeing, and smiled widely.

'Johanna Mason,' he called.

Now calm, Johanna smiled at him. 'Mellark,' she nodded. 'How's everything?' Upon the question Peeta's step hesitated slightly, his smile quivering, but he simply shook his head.

'Couldn't be better,' he said, then added resignedly, 'I guess.'

'That your house?' She signaled at the house.

'Nah.' His tone was now sad. He turned his head back with a small frown. 'Just visiting.'

The lack of information provided by his response held Johanna from asking who he was visiting — she guessed he didn't really want to talk about it. She still wondered who it was, though. Haymitch or Katniss?

For an awkward short second, he just stood there, contemplating the faded green of the door. He remembered he was talking to someone, apparently, for he turned and the surprise climbed back onto his features.

'I thought you'd come next week.'

Johanna shrugged. 'Don't ask me. The hovercraft came and I just climbed in.' Her scarce possessions had been delivered directly days ago. 'Paylor just sent it.'

'Where did they leave you?'

'I don't know,' Johanna answered. 'Somewhere near the woods. At the other side of the district, I think. There a problem?'

'Are you kidding?' Peeta laughed. 'The place has been ready for weeks. Come, I'll show you.'

With that Peeta strode away, leading Johanna past other two houses.

His behavior unsettled her only slightly. Everything he did gave the impression of being forced. Johanna could hardly blame him, of course. Even as bad as things had been for her at the Capitol, it was nothing compared with what they'd done to him — which was saying something, because she still was afraid of carrying on with activities as simple as washing her hands.

He was dressed simply, as if he hadn't really paid enough attention to what he was putting on himself in the morning. The colors barely matched one with the other, but they worked well with the environment, dark and sad as they were. The dull red of his shirt swallowed the sunlight that fell on it, and unless she placed her gaze directly on his blue pants they were a depressing tone of grey.

The way he moved made her feel uncomfortable, because Peeta himself looked uncomfortable. Johanna remembered the few times she was able to see him around Thirteen, how he never fitted anywhere anymore; he always looked out of place. It was the complete opposite to the way he was when she met him, when he could start a conversation with the simplest remarks and cheer up anyone at all by phrasing just the right thing. Some part of him had died. But, in truth, a lot had survived the living torture that became his life while at the Capitol. And Johanna was the only one that could fully appreciate how much had survived; not because no one else was able to see it, but because she was the only one that saw how much of him they tried to bury with tracker jacker poison and other forms of torture.

Peeta's painful sobs and cries were part of the concert of sounds that haunted her at night. Those she resisted more firmly, though. After years of practice trying to get over the tortured voices of her family as they were murdered for her to hear, screams weren't really something that affected her a lot — which didn't mean they didn't leave her out of breath, but in a way she had become more insensible to them.

Still, the memory of Peeta's cries for Katniss made her go stiff then just as much as it did now.

'There's a sort of groundskeeper around that we don't really know,' Peeta said, walking up the steps to the fourth house's front door. 'He takes care of everything out here so that it's nice.'

Johanna chuckled. 'Not too good at what he does, huh?'

'Well,' Peeta hesitates darkly, 'until about a week ago we thought the man was dead. Then the grass was trimmed and, you know…'

It wasn't a weird happening. Back at Seven Johanna became famous for asking about people that was now dead, thus turning any conversation uncomfortable. Many had died in the war and, as Paylor had put it, 'We may never know just how many we lost'.

'Sorry.'

'It's okay.' He shrugged. 'As I said, we didn't even know who he was.'

Johanna stopped at the top of the stairs, frowning. 'We?'

'What?'

'You said we,' Johanna said. She approached the place where he stood next to the door. 'Who's we?'

'Oh, mostly just me and Sae. The woman that helps take care of Katniss,' he added when Johanna's eyebrows quirked.

Again he looked uncomfortable. Probably that happened whenever there was any mention of Katniss, too. Johanna understood. She understood more than he could imagine.

Doctor Aurelius, whose career had gone through a very positive turn when he became the exclusive head doctor for all the surviving victors, had been the one who suggested she wrote her thoughts, memories and whatever else she felt like writing down. He even gave her a package full of blank paper sheets. It was a stupid idea. What would she write? About the horrific images that invaded her nightmares, the sad accounts of her travels? No, she would not write; and she had told him so.

However, one day she did. But she didn't write a story, or an entry on what Aurelius had called a journal. She wrote a letter, a letter addressed to someone she was fairly certain wouldn't want to read it; a letter that, indeed, she didn't even want to be read. Johanna wrote a letter addressed to Katniss Everdeen of all people, the person whose absence burdened Johanna to an extent no one would ever know.

 _Though they might_ , Johanna allowed herself to think, _they might very soon._

Peeta opened the door and held it open for her to enter. 'Welcome home,' he said with a smirk.

Johanna was surprised to find herself in a long hall with a tall ceiling and a doorway to the right that led to the dining room. Up ahead there was a door to the left, another to the right and a staircase leading up. There was also a formal living room — with all the couches facing the chimney — to her left. Furniture was simple and dull-colored as everything else in this district.

'You know,' Peeta waved his hand around from behind her, 'the ground floor.' He signaled to the staircase with his head. 'Rooms upstairs and bathrooms…' He smiled. 'Pretty basic.'

'Pretty big.' Johanna expected the house to be similar to the one she had in Seven, but this one was much bigger; the ceiling was higher and the rooms wider. The distribution of rooms was different, too.

'There's a studio down there, and there's the kitchen. Upstairs there's as many rooms as you can imagine. Bathrooms, dressing rooms — it's all too much for a single person to occupy, to tell the truth.'

Peeta sighed unconsciously as Johanna gazed around. 'Something wrong?' she asked.

He looked at her trying to decide if her interest was legitimate. 'It's nothing,' he said finally. He went and sat down in front of a fire that Johanna hadn't realized was lit. 'It's just…' he hesitated. 'Should I be supposed to feel something about the death of my family?'

Johanna nodded distractedly until she saw him looking at her expectantly. 'Oh. Well…'

'I mean,' he interrupted her attempt, 'they died months before I knew it, and when I was told,' Peeta gazed at Johanna miserably, 'I didn't feel a thing. As if I'd already known.'

Johanna looked at him uncomfortably, her body tense. She didn't know how to react to that. She was terrible at dealing with people's feelings — even her own feelings she found almost unbearable to deal with.

'Um…' she mumbled awkwardly.

Peeta shook his head resignedly. 'Did you feel anything at all when you knew your family was dead?'

Johanna repeated the sound as she thought about how to answer. She wasn't going to tell him how they had died — they weren't yet that intimate. But his question did bring back to her the reaction she had had after she saw their dead and disfigured bodies.

'No,' she whispered.

Peeta chuckled cynically. 'They really screwed us up, didn't they?'

Johanna limited her response to nodding silently while staring at the fire. After some time Peeta spoke again in a rather timid voice.

'My parents never came to live with me after my Games, you know? Said the place was too big.' Peeta sighed deeply. 'My last year here was awful.'

Then his eyes glazed and his stare became reflexive.

Johanna chew over the fact that Peeta was like this probably every day; and it made her feel bad for him that he had chosen to tell those things to her, Johanna Mason, who hadn't seen him for over two months and had showed no real interest in him for longer. This sad, parentless, lost boy had no one to talk to, and now that Johanna was here he had decided to open up to her.

It occurred to Johanna that maybe she and Peeta had become closer than people should be when they were imprisoned at the Capitol. In a way, she supposed, she actually felt tied to him because of that; after all, they had heard each other at their weakest.

Before she could stop herself Johanna started talking. 'After my Games nothing was the same.' Peeta turned to her as if he had forgotten she was there. She shrugged. 'My family did come with me, but it was weird. I felt they were scared of me.'

They exchanged looks for a minute. Peeta was evidently trying to gather up the courage to ask something. Johanna wasn't sure she wanted to hear it.

'Was it all true?' he finally asked. 'What Finnick said that one time?'

Johanna considered asking what he meant, but it would've been like putting on a raincoat to avoid an incoming thunderstorm — it would smother its effects, but it wouldn't stop the rain from coming. Even if she delayed Peeta from knowing it, he eventually would, anyway.

'If you're talking about the part where Snow offered us jobs we didn't want to do,' Johanna said, 'that's true. I wouldn't know about the incest and the poison, though, I never actually did it.' Peeta opened his mouth to ask something else, but Johanna had had it. 'I'll go change or something,' she said, 'I'm all sweaty.'

With that, Johanna practically ran out of the room and up the stairs, then walked through the first doorway she saw. It was a room with a bed at its center, a window across from the door, and naked, unremarkable walls. Two other doors were inside: one leading into a dressing room and one into a bathroom. She distractedly went in through the latter and programmed hot water to fill the bathtub. She returned outside to give the room another look.

Johanna laid down her possessions neatly on the bed. Shirts, pants and underwear; all of them were scarce in number. There also was the medium-sized wooden box in which she kept the letters she'd written over the last month.

For a moment she stared at it, trying to convince herself not to yield. After two minutes of standing there, she grunted; sitting down, she took paper, a pen, and wrote.

— _the day should be sad now that I'm not at Seven, but I'm now where the only hope I have is — and my wanting to see you starts outweighing the wanting to pretend to be who I'm supposed to be — some days I still dream of Thirteen because there's so much there that means something, although it barely lasted at all —_

Johanna knew she was blushing when she put the pen back in the box. She reread the words — hated herself for it. And when tomorrow I see you we might even recall it all together. It was stupid. Johanna wrote and wrote, but still she knew it was worthless and meaningless. Every night before going to bed she considered taking all those filled sheets of paper and throwing them into the fire. However, after she dismissed the idea she would lay down hugging the wooden box tight into her chest.

From downstairs Peeta called informing Johanna he'd meet her outside.

'Okay!' she called back.

With her breathing suddenly heavy, Johanna went back into the bathroom and undressed. The next ten minutes, though, she spent sitting on the toilet, watching the still water nervously.

It was a common exercise for Johanna lately, filling the tub and trying to work up the courage to get in. But she could never bring herself to do it. Her memories were too hard on her, pressing in whenever she tried to remember how much she used to love submerging her body under the warm water. Often she wondered what was done to her to ruin her in such a way, how had it happened?

Frustrated with herself, Johanna went back out and got dressed. When she walked out the front door again Peeta was leaning on the railing of the porch, looking out to the green.

'Peeta,' she mumbled, letting him know she was there. _Good call_ , Johanna thought when she saw him jump slightly and turn to her with something similar to panic.

'Oh, it's you,' he said, sounding relieved.

'Who else would I be?' Johanna chuckled, but by the look in his face she read he didn't appreciate the joke. 'Sorry.' She rolled her eyes.

Behind him Johanna saw an impressive landscape — more depressing than impressive, though. The Victor's Village was, apparently, sat atop a high spot in the topography of District 12, so that from where they stood they could fully take in the destruction that had fallen over the place. Remains of buildings and huge empty spaces where there were barely-discernible pits rose and fell smoothly along with the hills and plains that supported them.

'Terrible, huh?' said Peeta. 'I used to love this place because I could see the smoke coming out of the chimney of my parents's bakery.' He pointed his index finger in the direction of the square.

'You came up to my porch even when this wasn't my house?' Peeta chuckled. Johanna took a random shot by saying, 'I hope you will provide me with bread while I live here.'

'Bet you do,' he said. He motioned for Johanna to descend the stairs and inevitably her body became slightly warmer with excitement. Trying to hide it, she asked what their next stop was. 'Oh, I thought we could visit Haymitch. Let him know you're here.' Peeta shrugged.

'Oh,' she said almost sarcastically, 'that's a good idea.'

Mistaking her disappointment with something else, Peeta rolled his eyes. 'I know, I know. Trust me, I'm as excited as you are. But I think it'll be wiser that you see him today, before his house gets any nastier.'

As they made their way to the next house the way they'd come a while ago, Peeta explained to her how Haymitch had dismissed his cleaning lady as soon as he'd arrived. He said Haymitch had gone back to being a useless drunkard who he, Peeta, had to take care of.

'… so it's like I have two kids now, or something,' he finished. Johanna's eyebrows quirked at the exhaustion in his voice and his… anger — that's what it was. She mulled for a moment on what he said. She had never heard that tone in Peeta's voice. It really must be a lot of work, Johanna figured.

Suddenly, she realized that one of the kids Peeta was talking about was Katniss.

Partially hiding her fierce curiosity, she asked, 'So, is she a problem, too?'

Peeta stopped in his tracks, a moderated amount of surprise in his expression. 'Oh.' He hesitated. 'Well, it's just…' Seemingly, he had no clue what it just was, but Johanna could almost hear him mentally connecting his ideas. 'It's not really what I expected.'

'Thought she'd jump in your bed to beg you for your body?' Johanna hoped her resentment was well disguised.

He chuckled again, shaking his head. 'C'mon,' he said.

They had now reached the front of another equally-dull house. Haymitch's house.

Before opening the door, Peeta looked at Johanna over his shoulder and said, 'Brace yourself,' a cautious half smirk on his lips. When the door opened she knew exactly what he meant.

An awful smell invaded her nose and made her feel like gagging. She blinked several times while holding back the impulse to vomit before she could look up at Peeta. Even through his smile Johanna noticed his wrinkling nose.

They walked in.

Haymitch was in the kitchen, half sitting on a wooden chair, half laying on the thick wooden table. Seeing him there, Johanna was immediately sure that he spent all his days like that. The table, just as the rest of the kitchen — just as the rest of his house, by the looks of the hallway they'd had to cross to get to the kitchen —, was full of broken bottles, broken plates, and bits of old, smelly food. Haymitch himself seemed to be the source of the unique combination of sweat and alcohol that lingered above almost all other scents.

'Such life, huh?' Peeta mumbled distastefully.

Johanna, who had lived under similar circumstances under different drugs, disagreed with what he implied. 'We all know what we want.'

Peeta approached the table and shook Haymitch forcefully. Johanna sighed at his lack of response. She took a bowl out of the garbage that lay on the floor; then, after filling it with cold water, she handed it to Peeta.

He stood there for a second, his gaze trained on her curiously — amusedly, Johanna thought. She motioned her head to Haymitch, in case Peeta hadn't understood what the bowl and the cold water were for. Still, he stared.

'What?' she finally asked.

'Nothing,' he whispered, 'just…' He shrugged, as if Johanna could understand — though she couldn't.

After Peeta took the bowl from her, Johanna went around the kitchen opening windows.

She was distracted, however, when a fierce growling scream came out of a now-dripping-wet Haymitch. He jumped up, swinging an outstretched arm wildly but only slicing through empty space. Giving two or three steps away from his chair, he lost his balance and fell to the ground with a heavy thud.

Johanna noticed the knife he held in his hands. 'Careful there, Abernathy. I wouldn't want to be the one who had to clean up the mess after you fell on that and sliced your own neck.' She directed a meaningful glance at Peeta, who just smirked awkwardly.

Haymitch's body stiffened slightly when she spoke, probably as he tried to put a name to the voice. 'Mason,' he said finally. 'Great.' With a monumental effort, and Johanna's and Peeta's helping hands he stood up. 'Just because we didn't have enough sarcastic people around here.'

'I'm actually quite sure you didn't,' responded Johanna, mock surprise in her tone and face.

'They said they'd let her drop by in case the bombs hadn't been bad enough,' said Peeta.

For a moment, the surprise on Johanna's face turned authentic. She recognized a good comeback when she heard one, but she felt wary Haymitch wouldn't appreciate it. It had been years since she'd spoken to him last, but she didn't remember him as a person whose good humor was very open.

After he chuckled, though, she figured people could change radically.

'Sure they did,' he said.

'You knew I was coming?'

'Kid there told me weeks ago.' Haymitch nodded toward the dark corner where Peeta stood.

'They told me before I came.'

Johanna shook her head in disappointment. 'And here I thought it was a secret.'

Haymitch looked at her intensely. 'Why are you here, Johanna?'

Johanna remembered moments like this from their scarce past interactions — how Haymitch made her feel like he knew her better than anyone. She had seen the Games he won once. She knew that beneath the layer of drunken bastard he showed to the world he was a very smart man. A few times they'd talked in the past, and she distinctly remembered how Haymitch's eyes would glint with distrust at whatever small lie she said.

Johanna was suddenly nervous. He would see through her lies, she knew. Haymitch wasn't the problem — it was Peeta. She glanced nervously his way, but his interest in hers and Haymitch's exchange seemed quite oblivious as to the ulterior meaning of it.

She wondered for a moment, would Haymitch talk to Peeta about it if she told him the truth?

 _It doesn't matter_ , she thought. _Not right now. Right now I just need to answer. I'll deal with Haymitch later._

Meaningfully glancing back at him, she informed Haymitch, 'I was getting bored at Seven.'

It was the poorest attempt at a lie she could think of, and Haymitch's distrust was painted all over his face; fortunately, it served well enough to fool Peeta, apparently, who simply nodded and chuckled quietly.

'Must be boring going back to chopping down trees after what we went through, huh?' he said.

Johanna's body relaxed, though she couldn't remember when it had tensed. She nodded in confirmation.

Everything appeared to be going the way she wanted that day — Haymitch nodded, deep in thought, probably finding meaning in the look Johanna had sent him; then he said, 'Bet it's been boring for years now, knowing her.

'Why did you have to come wake me?' Haymitch asked suddenly and rather harshly.

'Peeta's idea,' Johanna answered defensively.

Peeta shrugged at Haymitch. 'Sae said spring's in the air today. That you should go out.'

'Spring's been in the air for a month for all she knows,' Haymitch grunted eyeing him warily.

Peeta and Haymitch started conversing then, conversing about things Johanna knew nothing about and felt no particular interest in. She decided she could skip their company until at least the next day.

She leapt from the table on which she had been sitting and walked out of the kitchen, explaining shortly that she wanted to take a long nap after her very long day. Peeta nodded, his eyes full of understanding; Haymitch watched her go, his eyes full of curiosity. And Johanna felt those eyes on the back of her neck until she turned in the hall to head for the front door.

After descending the staircase in front of the house, though, she turned left instead of right, and headed for the first house. The house with the flowers.

Katniss's house.

* * *

 ** _Review!_**


	3. Chapter 3

_**Enjoy!**_

* * *

 **Chapter III.**

Johanna had been waiting months to see her again. She expected her heart to beat out of her chest, her breathing to become hard and rough at her throat. However, she was calm. Calmer than she had been all day. The only sign of her eagerness was the slight blush that painted her cheeks.

There was no response when she knocked, so she let herself in.

A square of light illuminated the hall when Johanna opened the door, stretching far and wide all the way to the stairs. Johanna marveled at the fact that every house she'd seen today appeared to reflect the present in which their inhabitants lived. Hers, empty, silent and dusty; and Haymitch's, dark, nasty and sad. With that in mind, she walked in slowly, closing the door behind her; ready to try and unravel what the atmosphere into which she had just immersed herself in reflected of the present attitude of its owner.

Above all else, the place was dark. Inscrutable blackness surrounded Johanna, and a heavy sense of unease settled on her. All this felt like a secret she wasn't supposed to hear. The empty frames on the walls, the table with dead flowers on it. She remembered how Peeta had closed the front door earlier, trying to keep all this inside and away from him; how he'd looked at the house over his shoulder with frustration on his face.

Doubting profoundly that what she'd see was something she'd like, Johanna took a step forward, and, feeling that that first step would be the hardest, she moved her other leg and took the next, and the next and the next. She moved stealthily, afraid she might wake something up that would make her feel the way this place wanted her to feel — miserable and lifeless.

A fire was lit in front of Katniss when Johanna found her. She was at the formal living room, her eyes fixed on the flickering flames. A jacket that was too big for her covered her body, and a shawl was draped over her thighs.

She didn't react when Johanna greeted her.

Figments of her letters echoed all around the room for Johanna alone to hear. Though I crave the sight of you again I know not whether I'll be able to take it, what I'll see. We've all changed and I think I more than anyone, for now I openly acknowledge the way I feel about you, if only to myself. I can only hope your face grants me with its presence in my sleep tonight…

Katniss's figure remained immobile, and for a moment it occurred to Johanna she was dead. Then her head turned and her grey eyes paralyzed Johanna on the spot.

'Jo…' Katniss trailed off before finishing, utter disbelief written on her face. 'Johanna.'

Even surprised, Johanna thought, Katniss's expression was rather off, as if there was no real awareness of whatever sensations went through her body.

Johanna didn't smile — she never did, really, hadn't done it for years. But for the first time in who knows how long she had to suppress the pressure that pulled the corners of her lips upward.

She sat down carefully on another couch and stared at Katniss before speaking.

'Katniss,' she said. A cold stare was the only response she got. 'You look…' Johanna didn't know how to finish. She trailed off.

Katniss looked away, blushing slightly in the dark. 'Awful, I know.' Johanna could hear her coming back into herself the more she spoke.

'No,' she forced herself to chuckle — though, it barely took her any effort; she was so happy to finally see Katniss again. 'You look almost the same, actually.'

Katniss rolled her eyes at the intended taunting tone. 'C'mon, Mason.' Her head shook. 'Don't you lie to me.'

'Have I ever?'

'You did say you'd rip my throat.'

Johanna chuckled again. 'Who says I won't? You're still alive, aren't you?'

Her own lips stretched in a wide smile as she heard Katniss laugh. 'Yes, I am.'

That's what Johanna wanted — her smile. That was all she had been expecting to see. It was such a rare sight, that smile, that ever since the day she met her she knew it was a thing that one didn't get to see very often. And the way they could talk like this… She had missed it. During their times at Thirteen Johanna had felt Katniss was the only person she knew with whom she could talk about several things other than just the war or the Capitol.

It all made her chest swell intensely.

'Aurelius sent you to take care of me as well?' Katniss's voice turned cold, resentful. 'Like Peeta?' she added.

'You kiddin'?' Johanna asked. 'I was sent to Seven. They said it was now all better there.' Katniss's eyes connected with hers, and Johanna found herself speaking the truth at the sight of them. 'But it wasn't. They all looked at me as if… as if…' her voice threatened to break, so she stopped. Katniss understood. Johanna felt anxious to change the subject. 'You been here for how long?' she tried.

After a long silence, Katniss whispered, 'I don't know.' Her expression turned grim. Johanna could swear the room was colder now. Katniss sighed deeply. 'Have you talked to Peeta?'

'He showed me my new house.' Johanna shrugged when Katniss quirked an eyebrow at her. 'I had to stay somewhere, didn't I?'

Katniss looked surprised. 'You're going to live here?'

'Here? No. Not yet,' Johanna smirked teasingly, 'but two houses down the road.'

Katniss blushed and, ignoring Johanna's comment, said grimly, 'So you talked to him?'

'Not about you, if that's what you're asking.' Johanna let her face go blank, so as to let Katniss know she was serious.

'Why not?' Katniss frowned. She probably expected Peeta to mention her at the first chance he got.

Johanna shrugged once more. 'Not something I wanted to hear.' Although her expression remained tense, Katniss's eyebrows rose slightly in curiosity. 'I was hoping I'd get to see you,' Johanna pursed her lips at herself because of how soft her voice had gone.

Both she and Katniss blushed and turned to stare at the fire for a while, enjoying the silence as they used to such a long time ago.

Inside Johanna's head letters were written and rewritten in Katniss's presence. The light of your smile outshone even the fire at the heart. The sound of your laugh had on me the effect that water would have in a thirsty man, for I longed the warmness brought over me only by that glorious sound. The tendency to build expressive lines she had developed had exploded at the sight of Katniss, at the sound of her laughter and her voice, and at the feelings she made Johanna feel.

She felt like going over and sitting next to Katniss, pulling her warm body to hers and being able to enjoy the small bit of life that was still theirs to enjoy; the small bit of hope that remained standing amid the tragedy their lives had been turned into.

Unable to help herself, Johanna stared openly at the side of Katniss's face through the darkness. She had missed that face so much. The round cheeks, now hollow and pulled in; the straight nose, the line of her lips. Her mouth had maintained that pouty quality that Johanna had always admired — she guessed the face had been a priority when they brought Katniss back to health after the fatalities of the war.

Suddenly, Katniss turned and for a while their eyes were connected.

'Why are you here, Johanna?' Katniss asked. Johanna noticed it was the same question Haymitch had asked her — and that still it was different. Haymitch wanted to know her intentions: he was suspicious as always, but he had no idea what his suspicions were based on; Katniss's tone suggested that she expected to know much more. Johanna thought there was a hint of eagerness to her question, as if she wanted to have her own suspicions confirmed.

What exactly those suspicions were Johanna didn't know, but she sure hoped they were aligned with her own real intentions at coming to Twelve.

Of course, she wasn't about to admit that the only reason she'd come to Twelve was because of her, because of Katniss. Johanna wasn't about to admit that Katniss was now the only person who made her feel something, or that what Katniss made her feel was so strange to her, so intense and so overwhelming.

Johanna wasn't about to admit to Katniss that she thought she was in love with her — not just yet.

So she settled for another small truth that would probably be enough to satisfy Katniss's curiosity. Johanna said simply, 'Everything's happening here now — I mean,' she added when Katniss frowned, 'for us victors.'

For a moment, as she waited for Katniss to react, Johanna wondered just why she couldn't have thought that earlier, when it was Haymitch's eyes that stared at her inquisitively.

'Peeta says Paylor loves us,' Katniss murmured. Johanna thought she heard a hint of disappointment, but she was so hopeful for something like that that she didn't want to trust her perceptions too much right now.

'As she should,' Johanna smirks. 'You more than anyone.'

Katniss huffed. 'I did nothing.' Again her expression turned grim as her eyes left Johanna's. They went quite bright. 'Snow got that right,' she whispered after a moment, 'I'm just a poor, unstable girl with a small talent with a bow and arrow… Always have been.'

 _You're so much more than just a girl from Twelve who defied everything — to me, at least, you're so much more…_ Those and many other words that Johanna had written months ago threatened to slip past her lips. She pressed them tightly together.

When she spoke again Johanna was staring deep into Katniss's own grey ones. 'Please,' she reproached her, 'cut that out, Everdeen.' Her stare became a glare as she let her emotions take over in a measured way. _This much I'll allow myself to admit_ , Johanna thought. 'You started all this. Not when you destroyed that second arena, or when you tried to eat those berries. You started it when you volunteered for your sister.' Johanna knew, even before she'd said it, that that would break Katniss apart — but it didn't. Her eyes hardened until Johanna felt she was glaring into a couple of clear grey stones, but Katniss didn't cry. She continued, 'Now, we know that Snow didn't like it, and that Coin didn't like it either, but you showed them both — and the rest of Panem, for that matter — that only by being brave enough you could defy a regime seventy-five years old. And all just because you loved your sister too much to let her die.' At that Katniss's eyes did go moist with suppressed tears; one of them escaped and slid down her cheek. 'You showed them all,' Johanna concluded, 'that by loving someone enough a seventeen-year-old girl could become the bravest person alive.'

Katniss released a choked whimper, and then started to cry. Thick tears ran down her face, falling from her chin to her chest. Johanna felt her own chest swell painfully. She wanted to hold Katniss so bad.

'Sh-she.' Katniss tried to speak, but her body was convulsing so powerfully and her breathing was so ragged that all she could muster were broken sobs and anxious whimpers. Finally, after minutes of that, she was able to form one single word before going back to her sad and incapable state. 'Prim,' she whimpered.

And for a moment Johanna could see how the last weeks, the last months had been for Katniss. She remembered the state she saw her in when she was kept captive in the Training Center after her arrow pierced through Coin's chest, how she was lifeless; how she'd started to sing. She knew Katniss enough to know that at first she'd been angry with herself, and with the world, for the death of her sister; she had probably wished that so many things had gone different: The Games, the Quell… She most likely hadn't allowed herself to cry as she was crying now — at least not for as long as she probably needed it. Had convinced herself she couldn't feel anything anymore.

It was selfish and insensible, but Johanna felt happy that it was because of something she'd said that Katniss had allowed herself to cry — it helped her feed the fantasy that, like her, Katniss could only feel anything at all when they were together.

'She died,' Katniss cried. 'She died because of me.'

Johanna also knew enough about loss, mourning and grief as to contradict Katniss. Whatever ideas she had, she had spent months thinking about them. Telling her she had it all wrong would have no effect.

Instead of talking, Johanna stood up before she could stop herself and sat next to Katniss. Her arm circled convulsing shoulders. Katniss pressed her face tightly into Johanna's shoulder, moistening the fabric that covered it with her tears.

'She died,' Johanna confirmed, her voice weak. Katniss looked up at her from where she was nestled against the warm body, her expression stunned. Johanna's own expression was now soft, full of understanding, as only Katniss could claim to have seen it before. 'You didn't, though,' Johanna added.

They stared for a moment into each other's eyes and through their pupils and without as much as breathing they exchanged memories and thoughts and shared the pictures they had starred in time before. And Johanna could again feel Katniss against her at the mattress in which they'd slept, and see in her eyes the memories from Thirteen: Her own body writhing as she escaped a nightmare and her own face as seen through Katniss's eyes whenever she had to wake her up for similar reasons.

 _I wish I could again feel your heartbeat next to me, going on at the same rhythm as my own heart. Feel your hands in mine and share the warmness until it is ours instead of just yours or mine. Stare into your clear eyes and tell you all the stories you've wanted to hear and the ones you'll want to hear until your heart can beat no more._

Johanna lamented not bringing some of her beloved pieces of paper and a pen to plaster her thoughts and be able to forget her feelings until they were born again.

'Oh, Johanna,' Katniss whimpered into her chest. 'How I've missed you.'

She felt her own lips spread out in a wide smile.

Not a second later, though, her face fell, her smile melting along with her happy thoughts.

Katniss was crying because Prim was dead, and Snow had killed Prim — or Coin had… _Either way_ , Johanna thought, _they did it. They did this to us._ The Games and the Quell and the war and everything. It was all their fault.

And as satisfying as it had been to see Snow's lifeless body hanging from the post in front of his mansion, and Coin's limp form dropping to the floor with her chest pierced, Johanna could still feel Snow's shadow hanging over her and over Katniss, still dreamed of the Block being flooded to 'test' her, to frighten her.

Johanna imagined for a second what people saw when they looked at them. She remembered the pointing fingers and the hands covering whispering mouths back at Seven and at the Capitol. Johanna Mason and Katniss Everdeen and Haymitch Abernathy and Peeta Mellark — Snow's last batch of mutts. They were the legacy. Many people in Panem had suffered during Snow's reign, but they were protected by anonymity. They, the victors, weren't. Upon seeing them, everybody immediately remembered what had been done to them, how much they'd suffered, how much they'd surrendered — and, in Johanna's particular case, how much she'd appeared to enjoy herself whenever she had to kill other tributes.

Having that in mind, Johanna didn't feel too proud of the survival strategy she agreed to follow, and for which she was now still alive.

 _Though, had I not used it to survive, I wouldn't be here, holding her_ , she thought as she felt the still softly convulsing body.

Eventually Katniss calmed down and just rested against Johanna. Hours could have gone by when she next spoke; she sounded amused when she did.

'I'm sorry this is how I'm welcoming you,' she said.

Johanna smirked. 'Wasn't expecting much.'

Katniss pushed herself off Johanna's chest, her hand then resting on her shoulder. She smiled a shy smile when their eyes met. 'I didn't think I'd see you again.'

'Why?' Johanna couldn't help the slightly angry frown that tightened her eyebrows.

'A lot of pain?' she answered, shrugging.

Johanna's forehead slackened. 'Pain?'

Katniss turned her head away, embarrassed. 'You know,' she sadly mumbled, 'painful memories.'

Months ago, Johanna's reaction to that would have been either to kiss Katniss until her lips hurt or make fun of her because of how dramatic her words were — instead, and just because she wanted now Katniss more than any other thing and thus wanted to make things right, she softened her expression and shook her head slowly, her eyes lovingly looking for Katniss's.

She whispered, 'Hey,' and with her knuckles turned that face until she was again gazing into grey eyes. 'There's nothing painful about you. Not to me.'

Johanna wanted to have Katniss as close as possible. She wanted to grab her shoulders and crash into her until they became one. But she really wanted to do things the right way. It had been a long time since she'd felt Katniss's lips against hers, and she was willing to wait longer if Katniss needed it. _Let her do it_ , she thought.

It was almost amusing to her watching how Katniss blinked uncomfortable at the closeness, then released a deep sigh and stared down at Johanna's lips. Johanna smirked.

Five or so minutes flew by, and Johanna decided it'd be better if she left. She stood up all of a sudden, stunning Katniss out of her daze, and announced she'd be back some other day. Her smirk still stretched her lips as she leaned to kiss Katniss's cheek, turning it a red so deep and bright it was noticeable even in the dim light from the fire.

'I'll be seeing you, Mockingjay,' Johanna shouted over her shoulder as she made her way through the dark hallway and to the front door.

 _Your eyes were bright when I saw you last, and now that we met they were just the same, though for different reasons. And I have just promised I'll make them bright with happiness again._ Johanna smiled, satisfied and ready to complete a full letter as soon as she got home.

Her smile faded when she reached the base of the front staircase. Her eyes had found a pair of pruning shears laying at the edge of the grass circle in the middle of the Victor's Village.

It took her a minute's hesitation.

Maybe Snow was still over them, and maybe, even in death, he could still indirectly cause nightmares so frightening they woke them up. But Johanna convinced herself, then and there, that she would do her best to escape him — him and the horrors he'd caused them. The Games, the Quell. Her family's tortured cries. Haymitch's and Peeta's own families. Prim. They would learn to bear it. She would force herself and everybody else. And when again they walked into town to pointing fingers and rude whispers they'd overcome it together. They'd endure it and they'd teach everyone how if they, victors as they were, could live and leave those horrors behind them, then everyone else who'd survived the Capitol could leave their respective induced traumas behind.

She grabbed the shears and turned around. A satisfying surge of anger invaded her as her eyes set on the terrible brown bud, plain black now in the darkness. The stars and the moon lit the Village dimly and drew her shadow northward; their light fell softly on yellow petals but appeared to avoid the brown spots dotted around intermittently on the patch of primroses.

The letter kept writing itself in her mind as she moved her hand in front of her, the shears snapping back and forth with metallic whimpers. _And the day will come when you and I can be ourselves again and evolve together._ She tightened her fist repeatedly, crushing brown buttons before throwing them away. _And then we'll simply grow old and be who we will be, and see the other be the next thing, and the next thing and so on._ Her head raised finally, catching sight of the very last decrepit bloom; the topping one, the toppling one.

Setting her foot firmly on the ground, she dug her toes into the earth, leaning forward over the healthy blooms until the shears finally decapitated its neck. She took it and threw it away, and she followed its twisting form until the blackness swallowed it.

And she noticed the cloak of yellow had covered again the now bright and beautiful blooms.

 _And again we'll see happiness making each other's eyes bright._

Johanna made her way to her house, calm and confident as she hadn't been in years.

* * *

 **Just for the sake of it, I'm gonna say it. You may notice there's a sort of closure for things mentioned two chapters ago just above. That's because originally these first three chapters were the first chapter. I guess I felt slightly uncomfortable with it being so long or something, and decided to divide it up in three parts when I first posted it something like three years ago (at Archive Of Our Own). Still, you could consider these three chapters as the first act or whatever.**

 **I still haven't written anything for this little tale, so I can't assure I'll continue it. What's more, unfortunately for those liking this story (and for myself as well), I'm actually on the path to planning a story based on a different fandom and on some ideas that sound pretty nice inside my head. Whatever. I'll post the last two chapters in a few days, probably.**

 _ **Review!**_


	4. Chapter 4

_**Enjoy!**_

* * *

 **Chapter IV**

A few days later, when Johanna woke up, she stared at the ceiling, thinking. That assumption had been wrong. People in Twelve weren't like the people in Seven. They didn't whisper about her, or look at her as if she was a nastily deceased animal. They were nice.

Johanna had started to become accustomed to the natural niceness of Twelve and its people. Whenever she went to town to buy food or simply to walk — a habit she had acquired in sleepless nights during her most recent stay at the Capitol —, people would look at her with a smile that, strained as it was, was always honest.

'It's their freedom,' Haymitch told her one day. 'People here used to take care of each other. You know, ignoring crimes or condoning them. Katniss was known everywhere for her hunting skills, but not even the Peacemakers would punish her. It was easier if everyone just kept quiet. Made living here that much better.'

It was hard for Johanna to wrap her head around it. She was never one to go running to tell a Peacemaker about a crime if she ever saw one, but the people in Seven had that twisted idea of morality the Capitol had fought so hard to implant upon its subjects; they would avoid being caught close to someone they considered a criminal, and there was always someone willing to give the slip about a theft or of disproportionate parcels of food rations being illegally delivered to a family in need. People couldn't be safe even around their neighbors.

Johanna had never felt safe living where they all lived.

In Twelve, things were different. Haymitch explained to her how there had been a black market, known by everyone and used by most, a place to which even Peacemakers would go on a daily basis to have a decent meal. Everybody found benefits in covering up the things the Capitol considered illegal.

'And everybody there used to be like a large family.' And although his tone had been ironic, Haymitch's face was thoughtful when he told Johanna this; his mind far away in places from the past now gone forever. Then he had looked at her, eyes deeply troubled and sad. He said, 'It's funny. I never liked going there because I used to hate them all, but now that most of them are dead, I miss them.'

Things kept happening in town, as expected. Some damaged buildings kept toppling over as some other zones were just being cleaned. There seemed to be no way to bring it all back to what it was. But people kept trying. Former miners would leave their houses early in the morning and stretch out their working hours as much as they could stand, digging through glass and what few metal the constructions used to have, breaking chunks of rock until they were a manageable size.

A week after Johanna arrived, the streets closest to the square and what everybody called the Seam had already been cleaned out to the point that it barely had the appearance of having been a war zone — that is, until you walked by one of the several pits that adorned the pavement at intervals and that no one really knew how to cover up.

Maybe they didn't want to, it occurred to Johanna one day. Maybe, like the Games, it was a way for the people in Twelve to remember what had been done to them in the past. She hated that — those pits and the incomplete pieces of walls that still stood. She couldn't understand why people would want to remember how they had nearly all been killed. To her it was absurd.

She liked it here, though. Living at Twelve gave some meaning to her existence. She was part of something again. She was one of the victors, and here the victors were seen as the heroes they were supposed to be. Children ran to her, beaming brightly, when they spotted her in town, and adults greeted her everywhere amiably, as if they knew her well. Overwhelmed, Johanna tried to be as nice about it all as she could.

In the Victor's Village things also happened, although they were much slower. At least for Johanna's liking. After that first encounter, Johanna had barely had the chance to see Katniss by herself. Peeta had become a sort of contingency she hadn't contemplated when she decided to come to live at District 12. He was constantly… well, wherever she went. His daily routine consisted in visiting Katniss, Haymitch and Johanna throughout the day, and whenever Johanna couldn't be at Katniss's — which was often the case when Peeta was there too — she left and went to Haymitch's; then, when Peeta left Katniss's he went to Haymitch's and spent the rest of the day there, talking both Haymitch and Johanna to sleep.

It wasn't precisely bad. She appreciated the company, and Peeta had turned out to be a very easy person to talk to. Johanna enjoyed having people in her life again. The thing was, Johanna wished she could spend all her time with Katniss. After all, that had been the whole point of coming to live here; she had barely been able to see her, though.

Besides, and even if Peeta evidently tried hard not to let it show, sometimes the weirdness that had been implanted in him at the Capitol often resurfaced at the strangest of times. Not that it was dangerous — he hadn't yet tried to strangle anyone as far as Johanna knew, for example; but many things he did or said could only be explained as the product of his troubled mind.

As Johanna lay there, deep in thought, she heard Peeta — who was probably in one of his delusional episodes — call out to her from down the stairs. 'Johanna!' he shouted. 'I'm coming into your house!'

Johanna chuckled. Then her chuckle turned into a sigh. She called back, 'Better get out, Mellark!'

'Too late,' he said, already walking through the doorway of her room.

Johanna sat up, more amused than angry. 'How rude!' she exclaimed exaggeratedly. 'Did it ever cross your mind that I might have been naked in here?'

Peeta stopped. His unfocused eyes trailed Johanna's upper-body at her words. A blanket covered her legs, but her chest and stomach were just covered by one layer of cloth.

Johanna would never forgive herself if she let this chance go. Biting her lip in mocking seductiveness, she gazed sultrily at him. 'Peeta,' she drawled. 'What does that look mean, huh?' Then she attempted to moan suggestively, but his reaction had been so above what she'd expected that she couldn't hold back her laughter.

'J-Jo—' Peeta tried. Johanna was rolling around on the bed, her stomach hurting from laughing so hard. 'That's not funny.'

By the end, Johanna's laughing had turned into a giggling fit. 'Not for you, maybe,' she interrupted herself to muster.

Johanna stretched her body with a loud satisfied moan, and finished her heavy thinking session by concluding _How good life's come to be_ , while looking amusedly at Peeta's dark blush. She sighed once more and smirked at the ceiling.

'What's the plan for today?' she asked.

'What do you mean plan?' answered Peeta, the color of his face going back to normal.

'What are you doing here?'

'What?' Peeta was disoriented. He blinked at her and remembered. 'Oh,' he exclaimed. 'Someone mutilated the bush of primroses.'

Johanna chuckled. 'I did it… Like… two weeks ago.'

The feeling of the brown buds being squeezed inside her fists was still fresh in Johanna's memory.

Peeta frowned. 'Have I…?' He hesitated. Johanna knew what he'd ask. She did not want to hear it. 'Have I said that before?'

'About twice already,' she smiled pitifully at him. 'It's okay, Peeta, it's nice seeing you so often.' Her hand squeezed his shoulder reassuringly. 'Gonna take a shower now.' She pushed him out of the room. 'Help yourself to some food, Peeta,' she then called through the door, her ear pressed against the wood to make sure he descended. 'It'll go bad if no one eats it.'

The lady hired to feed Katniss — Greasy Sae, Johanna thought it was — had been stacking up her fridge for no reason at all. Johanna hardly ever spent time in her house, though, so the food just kept piling up.

Doctor Aurelius had told her a fear can be overcome by 'gradual exposition', that she could help herself overcome her instinctive fear of water by trying to submerge parts of her body small bit by small bit; one day a foot, another a hand, then wet her chest, wash her legs… So far Johanna had only been able to dip her hand in the water and cover her thighs with it, but her trembling had gotten so bad by the simple action that she had been afraid of trying it again.

She felt like trying then. Seeing Peeta had helped her make up her mind. It didn't matter how intense it had been for her to cut the dead buds from the bush days ago — it had only been a metaphor. If she wanted to really escape Snow's still-looming presence, she had to fight the mutt she had become.

With that in mind, Johanna pushed herself off the door and went into the bathroom.

Once the bathtub was full and Johanna naked, she threw the towel to the floor and stepped into the dreaded liquid, not giving herself chance to think about it.

The feeling was familiar, even after all that time. The water level not quite reaching her knees, she felt the warm tingling on her calves spread all over her body in one portion of a second. In less than a heartbeat she felt her body convulse, her blood pounding in her ears. She sat at the edge of the tub, adamant to resist it.

Her eyelids closed tight. Johanna tried to make her breathing calm, only succeeding after a few minutes. She then focused on the water touching her skin. It felt good — warm. She delved in the familiar sensation; she'd missed it.

Johanna let her mind wander. She recalled long baths and swimming sessions. Finnick swimming with her when she visited, years ago. How could something as simple and harmless as water cause her so much trouble? Johanna felt such hate for herself at the thought as she had never before felt.

 _You mutt_ , she told herself.

Then, she looked down and smiled. She was actually doing it. Her calves were under the water and she was enjoying the soft tickling sensation. She sighed happily. _Not so much a mutt anymore, huh?_

Hope burned inside her chest.

At that moment she was sure Snow was gone for good. No such thing as nightmares of him anymore. She had had enough. No more images of her beheading rival tributes or of her hands tightly wrapped around someone's neck. No more images of her victims coming back to haunt her night after night. No more electrical shocks at the feeling of water raining down on her.

She dipped her hands in the water, which was starting to turn cold, and let it fall over her head. After a few repetitions of the exercise, Johanna stood up.

There was nothing she couldn't do today.

Not wanting to discourage herself by trying to take thigs too far, though, Johanna dried herself up and got into her room to dress. When she descended the stairs she called out for Peeta.

'In here!'

He was in the kitchen, had called her through a mouthful of something. He smiled. 'I think Sae gives you the best food.'

'Really?'

Peeta nodded. 'Your fruits are fresher than mine.' He played with an apple for a bit before biting it. 'So juicy.'

'Same as me.' Johanna quirked her eyebrow suggestively. Peeta blushed again. 'Take some for you, if you want… Or all of them, for all I care. I don't spend too much time here, anyway.' Johanna waved her hand. 'Your place is nicer, or Haymitch's.'

'You kiddin',' Peeta snorted. 'I mean,' he added, looking around him, 'your place and mine are pretty much the same, but Haymitch's…?' He shook his head, letting her know he couldn't possibly see what she liked about it.

'Hey.' Johanna felt one of those urges to protect Haymitch's lifestyle again. She'd been feeling that way often. 'You seem to like it better there than at your house, too.'

Peeta shrugged again in response. Johanna thought he looked slightly irritated. He said, 'Better with you than on my own, right? And you're always with Haymitch.'

There were so many layers to that comment that Johanna decided to spend some time pretending to look for something to eat while she reflected.

First, Peeta had again showed his distaste for spending time with Haymitch, something that Johanna had already noticed. The interaction between the two of them was cracked, Johanna thought. Whenever they spoke to the other there was always a sort of instinctive wariness in their tone. They were constantly afraid they would open again a metaphorical wound by saying the wrong thing. Haymitch more than Peeta.

This wasn't news for Johanna. Twice already she had inquired about it to Haymitch. The first time, she'd asked him, 'Is it me or is Peeta sort of mad at you?'

Haymitch had avoided her eyes. 'Don't know what you're talking about,' he had said.

The second time Johanna had been more direct. Peeta had just disappeared out the kitchen door, claiming he'd go check on Katniss.

'Are you two ever going to talk about whatever's going on?' she mustered after the front door closed.

It wasn't her place to question a thing about something that had been going on for long before she came to Twelve, and she knew it; and Haymitch had let her know that by looking at her in that moment. His grey eyes cold, he'd stared at her for so long she considered apologizing and leaving. Then, Haymitch said shortly: 'Whatever problem we have is his problem.'

And indeed, after that, Johanna started watching them more attentively. Haymitch was leading a life of constant struggle to reach out to the boy, but Peeta kept taking steps backward and away from his former mentor.

Her head throbbed weakly when she tried to figure out what Peeta's despise could be founded on — there seemed to be too many probable causes.

The second layer Johanna could unravel from what Peeta had said, was how he apparently considered spending time with Katniss as being — his words, not Johanna's — 'on his own'.

Haymitch had taken enough decisions in his life as to have the whole district hating him; that Peeta amid them all hated him most was no surprise. But that Peeta felt something negative about the time he got to spend with Katniss was something Johanna never thought she'd hear. In truth, it annoyed her more than any other thing. Were it within her possibilities, Johanna would spend all her days with her; she couldn't, though, because being with her these days implied being with Peeta too, and Johanna sort of preferred being with Katniss alone. The presence of any other person there changed the whole experience, she felt; especially if it was Peeta, who had gone through so much with and because of Katniss.

It was hard for her to empathize with him on that point. The few times she'd seen Katniss since her arrival, she seemed fine to Johanna. A bit tired and inactive, but fine. She was still sarcastic and she was still a very poor conversationalist. Johanna couldn't see how Peeta felt.

The next point of analysis Johanna extracted from that unexpectedly deep answer, was how Peeta went to Haymitch's house only because there is where Johanna used to be.

That was true. Johanna did spend most of her time with Haymitch. The spontaneous relationship they seemed to have developed was the result of a series of independent circumstances: Johanna was the only person Haymitch could talk to right now who didn't resent him for the events that occurred at the Quell; she didn't really have anywhere else to go besides Katniss's place, which, as has been told, was out of the question; both Johanna and Haymitch were the only ones that had lived through years of Hunger Games as mentors, a situation that, they both agreed, put them apart from Peeta and Katniss, no matter how many horrors those two had survived at the war; and, ultimately, maybe Johanna and Haymitch just weren't all that different when things came down to it — they really got along easily.

But none of that was what bothered Johanna of what Peeta had said. The way he said it… as if he sacrificed the comfort of not having to be around Haymitch just to see her… It unsettled her. In her mind there was no good reason to be somewhere you didn't want to be just to be with someone else. That is, she'd do it for Katniss without hesitation, but in the mental and emotional situation Johanna was, that was hardly surprising — as a matter of fact, it only alarmed Johanna more to think that what he was doing for her she would only do for Katniss.

Was Peeta feeling that way towards her? And if so, why did he insist on spending so much time with Katniss instead of with Johanna?

Johanna felt a dangerous throb in the back of her head again. She stopped thinking, not caring that there were at least another couple of layers she could unravel.

She took some random container and sat on the table, watching Peeta.

Johanna thought her next words thoroughly. 'You really hate him, huh?' she mumbled through a mouthful. It was safe: not exactly inquisitive, but enough to maybe get him to say something.

Peeta stared at her, his expression impassible. Johanna realized he was still trying to decide whether he wanted to trust her or not.

She said, frowning, 'Peeta, what's the point of wanting me around if we won't talk about these things?'

'I didn't remember you as such a talker, to be honest.' Peeta's lips drew a small smirk.

'Things change.'

'But some others don't.' His smirk was now complete.

Johanna nodded condescendingly. 'You gonna talk or can we leave?' Peeta asked where they'd be going to. Johanna lifted an eyebrow, both to let him know that the answer was obvious and that she was not going to let him change the subject. 'Gotta face it,' she stated firmly.

Peeta sighed.

'I don't know.' He made a big deal out of washing a plate he hadn't used before speaking again. Johanna waited patiently. 'I guess I can't help it.' He looked at Johanna. 'He said he'd keep her alive.'

Johanna frowned. It was all because of Katniss, then. 'And he did, didn't he?'

'But in what state?' Peeta exclaimed. Johanna suppressed the urge to roll her eyes at him. 'I mean, what happened to her? You can see it, too.' He pointed at her. 'You lived with her. You can tell.'

'I can tell she's still alive.' _And I can tell she missed me as much as I did her, because she told me._ Johanna kept that to herself.

'Oh, big deal.' Peeta shook his head at Johanna. 'You don't even care.'

Johanna jumped down from the table. Walking slowly towards him, she felt her hand close in a tight fist, ready to punch. 'You've no idea what you're talking about, Mellark.'

He had touched a soft spot, and somehow he knew it. 'Okay.' Peeta showed Johanna his hands in surrender. 'I'm sorry.' She kept her scowl centered on him. 'I just can't…' He gazed at her miserably. 'She's not Katniss anymore.'

This time, Johanna did roll her eyes. 'Oh,' she cried. 'Come on!' She slapped him on the cheek; not hard enough for it to hurt, though. 'You gotta let that go, man! Things change — people change.' She chuckled. 'You think you're the same person you were. Open up those stunning blues and see what things have come to be, okay?'

His eyes wide, his mouth hanging open, Peeta stared at her.

A long silence followed.

'She won't even come out.' Peeta's voice broke.

Suppressing another eye-roll, Johanna promised herself that if Peeta cried she'd knock him out — for his own good.

She said, 'She won't even get up from her couch, I know.' Her shoulders rose. 'So what? Nothing we can do about it. Let's just keep ourselves around her for when she does, okay? Because she'll need us.'

Peeta was quiet. Suddenly, he smiled. He turned to Johanna. 'You'd said that already.' Johanna frowned, not remembering. 'Not to me — to Haymitch. I heard you. Months ago.' His lips stretched wider. 'At Snow's mansion.'

Johanna knew what he was talking about. She had been at a control room, watching Katniss. Haymitch had found her.

'Paylor wanted me to tell you you're not allowed in here.' Katniss had been laying without moving on her bed, her eyes unfocused upward. They watched her through a screen. Haymitch told her Paylor was about to become the new president, that they shouldn't be defying her. 'We don't want to be treated as Coin treated us, do we?'

Johanna inquired whether it was a good thing or a bad thing to have Paylor become the new leader of Panem. Haymitch had shrugged. 'She likes us enough,' he said.

 _Us_ , Johanna thought. 'We're a family now?'

Haymitch had chuckled.

Of course they weren't a family. They didn't know a thing about each other. Besides, back then, Johanna didn't have any interest in Peeta or in Haymitch; and her interest in Katniss was driven only by the dreams she'd been having in the mansion. Dreams of warmth and kindness. She was trying to learn what they were about, what they meant.

'You gonna take me with you?'

'Paylor told me to tell you you shouldn't be here, not that I should prevent you from being here.' He motioned with his head at the screen. 'You enjoying it?'

Johanna stared at it. Katniss had gone into the bathroom. Just a day before Johanna had written her first letter addressed to Katniss. She had been making up her mind. Did she want her to read it?

'When are you leaving?' he asked.

'Couple days.' Haymitch lied to her then, told her he wished she'd come with them. 'Stop it.'

They watched in silence as Katniss walked out of the bathroom. Her eyes drifted over the untouched plate of food; she ignored it, then lay back down.

'Never thought it could be so hard to commit suicide,' Johanna said. 'Such a curse it must be to be the only one who wishes you were dead, huh?'

'Oh,' Haymitch smirked, 'I'm sure there's plenty of people who wishes I was dead.'

'All but you, Abernathy — that's my point.' She nodded at Katniss. 'Katniss Everdeen is the only one that wishes Katniss Everdeen was dead.' She sighed. _Even I want her to live now_ , Johanna thought.

'You think she'll recover?'

'Oh, sure she will.' Johanna laughed shortly. 'Enough to be functional, like all of us.'

'Really? She lost a sister.'

Johanna snorted. 'And you your family. The same as Peeta or me. Or all the other dead ones. She'll recover.' She nodded confidently. 'What she'll need,' she added, 'is for us to be around her when she does. So let's try to be there for her.'

'Hey, hey,' Haymitch's eyes showed a small amount of surprise. 'You're serious.' Johanna nodded dismissively. 'But you're leaving.'

'I know,' Johanna had replied. 'I know,' she had repeated.

Then she had left.

Peeta was staring at her, smile frozen on his face, his stance stiff. In his gaze Johanna could see the sadness of a boy who'd lost everything — his parents, his brothers, his mentor; all his friends if he'd ever had them; the one she loved. And beneath all that she could see the foundations of the man he would come to be. Broken, maybe, but with more in his past than what many others could claim to have gone through at the age of forty. And his eyes were focused, his intention clear in them. He was weighing her up. Eternally trying to see through her every thought. He wanted to understand her.

Johanna looked away.

No one understood her. No one had ever done it. No one but Katniss — and she wanted it to remain that way.

Finally, Johanna made her way to the doorway. And, eyebrows relaxed, voice low, smirk softly spread, she asked him, 'Shall we go now?'

Peeta sighed. He stood up and followed her out to the hallway. At her front door, he placed his hand on the doorknob. Before opening, though, he whispered at Johanna.

'There's really lots of hope in you, isn't there?'

'You have no idea.' A shiver ran down Johanna's spine.

* * *

 _ **Review!**_


	5. Chapter 5

**Quick and curious thing. During the last few days I've been reading for the second time a book called The Price of Salt by Patricia Highsmith. Quite beside the point just allow me to strongly recommend it since it's such a good book (I think a movie was released some time ago, Carol, quite decent, too). The fact is, I didn't remember it, but I'm pretty sure the first time I read the book was precisely while I was writing this very story, because now that I've been rereading it, I've noticed the way in which I intermingle sentences from Johanna's letters is quite similar to how the author of the book does something of the sort; well, that and I've found some other similarities in the writing of this and another one of my most recent stories. I imagine I felt quite inspired while reading that book. . . . Funny how one forgets those things, huh?**

 _ **Enjoy!**_

* * *

 **Chapter V.**

'So,' Haymitch began. 'Are you ready to talk?'

With a tremendous sigh, Johanna fell on the chair. 'You just won't stop, huh?'

He shrugged. 'I like thinking my annoying inquisitiveness helps hide the fact I'm a wonderful human being.'

'Really.'

'Hey, I care about you.' His eyes told Johanna he was joking. Still, she couldn't think of any other reason why he would care what her intentions were for coming to District 12.

'Yeah, you do.' Her demeanor turned suspicious. 'What do you get from this, huh?'

'From what?'

'From knowing what I'm keeping from you.'

Haymitch chuckled. 'I'm a man of simple tastes, sweetheart. I like alcohol… and I like people.'

Johanna interrupted him with a snort. 'You don't like people, Haymitch.'

'Okay,' he yielded, 'I don't. But I get them.'

Johanna crossed her arms, eyeing Haymitch carefully. He did get people; better than anyone else she knew. He had been trying to interrogate her every time she visited. He would say, 'You ready to talk?' and until Johanna answered he would sit silently with a smirk on his face.

Haymitch had started taking care of his appearance. Compared to how Johanna had seen him the day she'd arrived, he looked like a completely different person. His hair and untended beard still were scraggly, but he had changed his clothes and it was obvious he had taken upon the habit of showering. However, he still drank a lot, going violent by mid-afternoon and passing out every night.

Johanna sometimes felt bad for him. He was very lonely. She couldn't even imagine what haunted him at night — she didn't really want to imagine it. His face was too wrinkly for his age, his eyes baggy with exhaustion… She understood why he insisted in knowing what was going on. With Peeta avoiding him and Katniss in her catatonic state, Haymitch probably felt as if he really was alone in this world.

Surprisingly, Johanna felt comfortable with being Haymitch's anchor to District 12. Haymitch and Johanna were rather alike.

'You remember that time you came here? For your Victory Tour?' said Haymitch, his eyes settled on hers.

'You were drunk when we met,' Johanna chuckled. 'How do you even remember?'

'I just do.'

'Yeah… I think I remember, too.'

Haymitch leaned forward, his elbows placed on the wooden table. He continued, 'We had this conversation.' Johanna nodded slowly. She remembered vaguely.

'You joked about that last tribute I beheaded.'

'Hey!' Haymitch remarked, smirking. 'You do remember. Yeah. I said, "Almost as effective as sinking the axe into his head".'

'Because of your Games!' Johanna nodded again, finally understanding what the joke had been. 'I hadn't thought about it. I didn't know back then how you'd won—'

'Survived,' Haymitch corrected her, his voice suddenly cold. 'Yeah, I said that and you answered…' Haymitch trailed off.

'That either option had sounded exciting in my head,' Johanna completed.

Haymitch hummed in confirmation. Johanna's shoulders tensed when she repeated what she'd said during that conversation. It had been a disturbing lie. Back then, when she still had things she cared about, people she loved, her act at the Games had affected her immensely. She had been told to keep playing her part even after her Games were over, which helped her revive the things she'd done more vividly night by night.

'It's because of that that I knew you were like most of us.' Haymitch's expression was one of utter understanding. 'You weren't like the Careers. You were a victim, too. Like me.'

Johanna stared at him. It was quite a revelation. She'd always known Haymitch could see right through her lies, but to that extent? She was amazed.

She told him what Peeta had said almost a month ago. 'They really screwed us up, didn't they?'

Haymitch didn't answer.

They shared a comfortable silence, both pondering upon what had been done to them. In Johanna's mind, her own personal horrors and nightmares replayed. The painful memory of her parents screaming, her body submerged in water as electricity blinded her. For the first time in years her mind recalled the infamous feeling of the aluminum handle of the axe she'd picked at her arena, how heavy it felt when it rose over her head; how easy it was to let it fall when the moment required it. It recalled the opposing force that came when the sharp head hit a tribute, and the morbid pleasure originated when whatever she was cutting was cut.

Johanna hadn't allowed herself to touch another aluminum axe ever since.

She said, 'Have you ever wondered what it would've been like for you if your name hadn't been called?'

She had. She did not say it.

Haymitch looked at her disoriented, still immersed in his memories. He blinked. 'Not for a long time now.' His head shook. 'Too many things to change — even if it's just up here.' With a finger he tapped his temple. 'I probably would've died in the mines, anyway. Along with Katniss's father.' He frowned suddenly, as if remembering. 'How is she, by the way?'

Johanna ignored him. She was thinking. 'I can never imagine me as something else,' she said, her expression distant. 'I don't know how can you even picture yourself as a miner. I don't even remember how I used to be.' Haymitch stared at her. Johanna was letting him into secrets no one — in a way not even her — had ever heard. 'I mean, what did I like doing? Did I like singing or reading? Did I enjoy going to school?' Her head shook.

There was a prolonged silence. Eventually he said, 'You're asking those things to the wrong person, Mason.'

'I wasn't asking anything.' Johanna looked sideways at Haymitch. He knew.

'I know,' he confirmed.

The kitchen was submerging in darkness. Outside, the sky was turning a dark blue.

'I don't even know if I had friends.'

Haymitch said grimly, 'Events like the ones we went through are the sort that change the meaning of friendship radically.'

Johanna concurred. 'You realize no one would volunteer for you…'

'And that everyone would just watch with their arms crossed as you battle for your life.'

Johanna sighed. 'And that there's no one who likes you anymore after you've killed to survive.'

Their eyes unlocked to roam over the old cabinets that lined the walls and the broken bottles that covered the floor.

'It's your eyes, Johanna,' Haymitch said. 'They betray you.'

'The bastards.' Johanna glanced out the window.

'It's nice,' he murmured, contemplating his hands on the table. 'One can know how you're feeling by looking into them.'

'Oh, yeah,' Johanna answered. 'That's nice.' Her sarcastic tone was due more to the feelings she felt than to the fact that others could see them.

'Yeah, it's nice.' Haymitch obviously could see what it was that bothered her. 'Feeling things, I mean,' he confirmed. 'It's kept you alive, hasn't it?' The glint in his eyes told Johanna he meant much more than what the words said.

That hit Johanna hard. She glared at him, half surprised half scared — mostly that filtered as anger, though. Did he know, then, what her business were at Twelve?

'Okay. Sorry.' Haymitch lifted his hands in surrender. He looked amused. 'It was just an assumption.' He shrugged. 'I know by your expression that it was an accurate one, but it was just a random shot.'

Johanna continued to glare and, with a smirk, Haymitch endured.

It sometimes scared Johanna how much of herself she could see in him — or how much of him she could see in herself… Either way, the way he'd made the right guess just now — it was the way Johanna herself would've done it. Gathering the pieces together — how she avoided talking about Katniss, how she could never stand to be around her when it wasn't on her own, maybe even the way she frowned at Peeta whenever he announced he'd be at Katniss's — then dropping hints in the way of random comments to measure reactions. That's what she'd been doing with Peeta, trying to get to know what the deal was with him and Haymitch.

After a while she spoke. 'Just a random shot, huh?'

Haymitch, like her, took pride in his abilities of deduction, Johanna thought. He explained how he'd been 'studying' her since the first lie, weeks ago. How he'd been watching her closely and had concluded that whatever she was looking for had to do with her emotions. 'Once you know a person you can tell what causes the things they do,' he assured her, 'and you, sweetheart, you do stupid things when you have feelings.' He chuckled, his head bent. 'Now, I don't know what those feelings are, but I think we both know I will find out eventually.'

Haymitch winked an eye at Johanna.

She huffed. 'You should go back and work with Plutarch, you know?' She glared at him, though this time with amusement. 'You meddlesome bastard.'

'I already told you,' Haymitch chuckles. 'We all have our own definition of what a friend should be.' He tilts his head. 'Mine is that a friend should care about what worries his friends.'

So they were friends now? _Now Haymitch Abernathy is my friend_ , Johanna thought depressingly. _How reassuring._

She gave the kitchen a look. White rays of moonlight washed the floor in white. The place still smelled strongly of alcohol and vomit. Johanna had become accustomed to it, to having to watch where every step was taken in order to not have a piece of broken glass pierce through her shoes; to taking deep and discreet sighs in an attempt to filter clean air every once in a while.

Johanna realized how comfortable she felt being here, and being around him, around Haymitch; she realized she had spent every day of the last week hanging out at his place simply because she liked it, not just to not be alone or to not be at her own house.

 _…that a friend should care about what worries his friends_ , Haymitch had said. Johanna suppressed a chuckle as she thought that, maybe, what she'd been doing — of trying to learn the reason why Peeta and Haymitch were distant — was what a friend would do for other friends.

Was Haymitch her friend? _Yes_ , Johanna thought. _Yes, he is._

It astonished her, in a way. It was true that she couldn't remember what having a friend was, and for Johanna things hadn't gone the way they had for Haymitch, her definition of what a friend should be didn't change — it vanished. She had no friends. She hadn't had them for a long time.

 _What_ is _a friend?_ she wondered.

She directed a frown at a broken plate that lay by her feet, thinking. _A friend_ , she began mentally, _a friend is someone to share secrets with._

Haymitch entered her sight again as her head rose. A whirlwind of several different thoughts was occupying her mind. She felt overwhelmed. Share her secrets? She had a lot of them, and most of them were secrets not because they were painful enough for her to want to keep them for herself; they weren't embarrassing or sad in a way that would make her not want to tell them. Most of her secrets were secrets simply because there was no one who would care enough to listen. There was Finnick, of course, who knew most of what had happened and knew almost as much about her as she knew about him. But now he was dead.

And Haymitch was here — drunk, useless, and asleep almost all the time, but here, nonetheless. And he had just admitted to her that they were friends… sort of.

Thoughts kept running through, echoing in whispers all around her. _Katniss — the letters — Peeta — the Capitol — Snow — Coin — the fear of water —_

Johanna knew that would continue to haunt her until her nightmares came — that is, apparently, unless she decided to share something with Haymitch.

Quickly evaluating the advantages and the disadvantages of sharing each of those things and the twenty others that pressed to surface, Johanna decided that it would be easier to tell him exactly and only what he wanted to know — for now.

'It's Katniss,' she whispered. Her eyes avoided Haymitch's, but she was sure he would know it was the truth by the way her shoulders tensed at its sound. 'The reason I'm here. It's Katniss.'

Johanna looked at him, expecting to see a knowing smile or a surprised expression. All she saw, though, was a frown towering over attentive eyes. Haymitch was allowing her to explain further.

Johanna was glad.

That much she knew made her feel uncomfortable about having friends — the telling of stories was interrupted, disjointed and often lacked any sort of structure. She wasn't a great writer, but as a girl that had spent most of her time during the last few years reading useless books — sadly, they had been her only real friends after the Games — she admired people who were able to tell the simplest tales beautifully.

She was not one of those, though. She had no storytelling ability whatsoever. Even in her letters her memories were scattered all over the place and flew through time as her thoughts often did.

Luckily, the topic at hand — that is, Katniss, The Mockingjay — was a well-known fact of the wars to everyone; and, Johanna was sure, of them all Haymitch was the one that knew most about her — except, perhaps for Peeta.

Johanna gathered her thoughts, taking several long minutes at it. Haymitch stared patiently for a while before finally leaning forward and squeezing Johanna's shoulder softly. Their eyes met.

'Are you ready to talk?' Haymitch asked. Somehow his smirk was reassuring, his elbows were again on the table. Johanna sighed deeply one more time, nodding.

She began explaining.

 **...**

 _I've had you in my head today_ —

(wrote Johanna that night, sitting stiffly at a couch in front of the fire in her formal living room; she had spent hours rolling around on her bed, fruitlessly trying to empty her mind enough to fall asleep) — _speaking with your warm soft voice and your calm demeanor._

 _For some reason I remembered the first time I saw you as I told Haymitch what has been going on. It was when you volunteered. Then I thought, there's a brave one. Later it occurred to me that you might not be brave, that you might have just been trying to react to things. That you'd done it out of instinct. It made me feel sad. I wouldn't have volunteered had any of my brothers' names been called. They're all dead now, though, so it doesn't matter._

 _What matters is that, apparently, I wouldn't sacrifice myself to go back into the arena even if it was for people who I was supposed to care about. What matters to me, that is. They were older than me. I remember the reaping days when they were the ones at risk. I never felt nervous. Did that make me a bad person? Does it make me a bad person to know that I don't even care if it did?_

 _Today I confessed to Haymitch that you're the reason I've come, so it makes sense that you've been in my head. I told him a lot of what happened. Today I remembered a lot, a lot of you and me, of us back at 13. I wondered if it's been in your mind. I suppose it has. You said you'd missed me._

 _I said to him, 'My house is full of books. Back at Seven.' I described it to him as I did with you. Told him there were bookshelves stacked and tables covered with them. I told him how I thought that my memory had been affected somewhat by my traumatic life, how I seem to forget every book I read. It's sad. To think about how I've read so much of those and still can't remember a half of them._

 _It's good to know that the important things in my life is what I actually can remember. Like you, or Finnick. Even Peeta. I remember the week before the Quell. All of it. We all became a sort of big family there, didn't we? I remember tying knots with Mags, and throwing spears with you. Painting with Peeta. How relaxing it was to be around the couple of morphlings._

 _I've told you all this… I think. I felt like one of the victors then. For the first time in my life I felt that being called a victor could actually bring me some happiness. It made me feel sorry for not even attempting to know them before the Quell. To think every year I would've had the chance._

 _He said, Haymitch said, that a friend worries for his friends. I wonder how I feel about that, about him and about Peeta. Because there's no doubt how I feel about you._

 _It occurred to me today that I might love you. It's so strange. To love. If this is love, that is. I don't think I've ever felt love before, not while being conscious about it. I loved my parents, but that is like a reflex: everybody loves their parents, right?_

 _I tried describing to him how at 13 we kissed almost by accident our first time._

 _I dreamed of us a while ago. Of then. When you woke me up one of those times. You were trembling, shaking uncontrollably in your sleep. You were groaning loudly. I think I had to slap you awake, because prodding you with a finger or screaming at you wasn't working. I remember thinking that my screams probably would become part of your nightmare if I kept at it. So I slapped you awake. Slapped you hard on the cheek._

 _I didn't, in my dream. Slap you, I mean. In my dream I kissed you so you'd wake. And you kissed me back, and we hugged and kissed each other back to sleep. Like that other time we actually did that._

 _I like remembering those other times, when you and I would kiss and it would be nothing abnormal. When every night we shared a bed and the warmth of the other's presence._

 _I didn't know I missed it, missed you. When we were all at the Capitol I was sad. I didn't know why, but I was. I'm never sad, and it's not like I'm always happy, either. Mostly I'm in the middle. Simply stable, I think. Indifferent. Aurelius told me to write. And I wrote to you._

 _When I wrote to you I knew you'd end it. My sadness. I knew I missed having you around. Kissing you and hugging you. Having you to myself._

 _That time, I hugged you after you awoke. I had had a nightmare myself. I hugged you out of instinct. I remember feeling you shaking against me and crying. You had never cried. It'd been years since I'd seen someone cry._

 _You called me Peeta, I think._

 _'Peeta! Peeta!' you whimpered. And upon seeing me the tension of your face left you. You stared back at me with such intense eyes. For the first time in years I felt something for another person other than indifference._

 _'Johanna,' you whispered. Again you pressed into my chest._

 _For a second I felt terrified. Feeling you close… It was too intimate for me. I think that, had it been someone else, I would've pushed them away, off the bed and as far from me as possible. I twitch every time something touches my body without my knowing. But I didn't react in any way that night. I just hugged you._

 _'The Quell,' you said. I remember shuddering, sharing the shudder with you. 'The jabberjays and Peeta dying.'_

 _It hurts slightly to remember it. How you suffered so much for Peeta. I'm selfish… No, I'm not. I have never been. Only with you. Weeks later you were happy; as happy as I've ever seen you. Which is not much. Both of us at night, though, would go back to being scared of ourselves, of the burden we carry. Scared of falling sleep._

 _That's the reason why I didn't think of you once until I wrote that first letter. What we did was accompany the other through that rough time._

 _Still some lines remain of that letter. Still I remember them. Today I said goodbye to you, and you barely heeded me. Before I walked out you stared into my eyes, in that way I remembered dearly. And hope can't help but grow within me, not of you or of us, but of a future I might want to endure. Yet that first night was not what made hope be born in me._

 _We spoke in whispers and, finally, somehow, we ended up just staring into each other's eyes. Your arms were still around me and I still held you. Again I whispered something, and your eyes turned down to look at my lips._

 _You started it. It was that look, that glimpse you let be seen of desires I know you weren't even aware you had. Not desires, though. I doubt either of us ever truly felt desire for the other. Not that kind of desire, anyway. Desire for the not being alone, for the strength only ever provided by the support and warmth others can give._

 _Kissing you was a natural reaction._

 _Your eyes fled back to settle on mine. I kissed you. You looked at me with that look. Pure shock, I thought it was. An apology was coming out when your face rose and met mine._

 _That night was not what brought you back into my head. Seeing you burned and distant on a hospital bunk, or saying goodbye to your deft ears wasn't, either, what made you come back._

 _It was those last words. That last fleeting glimpse of who you really were. That's what made me hope there could exist something between us._

 _I remember you handing me the bundle of pine needles. You were floating amid this sort of aura. I never told you. Never really thought of it until now. I was drugged, and your visit that afternoon was the nicest one. 'On my family's life,' I made you swear._

 _My eyes closed. The soft smell of home seeped through my nostrils. The morphling was heavy in my system. Hours could have gone by in the seconds my eyes remained closed, so when I saw you still standing there I was curious._

 _'Need anything else?' I remember asking._

 _You hesitated. You were uncertain. You were unsure._

 _'I doubt there's much you can tell me that would surprise me,' I said. My head was buzzing. Sleep was claiming me. You were going out of focus. A bright shape amid shadows. 'Katniss,' I added, simply to feel the pleasure of saying your name._

 _A faint, blurry smile adorned you. 'I'm going to the Capitol,' you whispered._

 _I was desperate, I was weak. I could not put up a fight. When we kissed I felt._

 _My afternoon had left awkward visits and needless euphemisms. Intended demonstrations of inexistent pity. I was tired, sad. I wanted to be left alone to shed tears and rip my pillow to shreds. They had gotten the best of me, they broke me down. I would've preferred it if they had electrocuted me to death._

 _So your smile was the most welcome sight I'd seen, because I'd been close enough to understand how much you'd gone through to allow yourself that smile. I knew it had nothing to do, and didn't have in consideration, just how much you would risk your life going there. I tried smiling back at you. 'Good luck out there, Mockingjay.'_

 _Again you hesitated. You pressed your hands to my forearm and bent down to kiss my lips. 'Let's hope I'll have it,' you said._

 _My drugged head rose for another exchange. Another long, soulful exchange. After you left I questioned myself why it was that only in this condition could I show some feelings, or feel them at all._

 _At the door you stopped. Looked at me one last time. 'You get better, Mason.' Your sadness was the last thing I saw. 'You swear you will.'_

 _I swore._

 _I didn't cry after you left. I didn't vandalize any hospital gear as I had planned. I stared at the ceiling until my eyelids closed of their own will._

 _Another night comes to me often. For no reason at all, apparently. We'd taken to sleeping in your bed during the last week at Thirteen. Briefly we spoke of Peeta. A few days before he'd gone crazy at the dining hall. 'I don't think I'll want to see him before we leave,' you said._

 _I was sat in front of you. Roaming your face with my eyes. I wanted to be uncomfortable. We never spoke of such deep things, of such sentimental issues. I wasn't. I laid a hand on your knee. 'You probably shouldn't need to,' I assured you._

 _I remember that night, I think, because of the kisses. You kissed softly that night. What used to be sheer and calm need was replaced by a courageous admittance of feelings. I couldn't see it then. Just now I'm learning what that softness meant._

 _As usual we laid down facing each other. Not touching. Overnight we would drag ourselves around, end up intertwined. In the morning I stared at you, squinting through the darkness. The wrinkles in your forehead leave no trace when they're gone. Your eyelids are never still, your eyes in constant surveillance of your mental projections. Your breathing can be slow one minute, racing quickly the next. I smiled continually at the sensation of your thumb caressing the stretch of skin exposed by the hem of my shirt._

 _You awoke with a low greeting. We kissed_

 _'Something wrong?' you asked, frowning. I was staring at you intensely. I pointed out there'd been no nightmares. You agreed. Then looked at me, looked away, and were hesitating. Hesitation with you is always meaningful. You said nothing was the matter when I questioned your demeanor. 'Just,' you added, 'just this dream I had.'_

 _You said nothing more, but for the day you stared at me strangely, meditatively. I gather you dreamed of me. I can only hope it was a good dream._

 _Those times were the ones that made everything more meaningful. When I first wrote the letter I had that expression in my mind. Your brow creased, your lips pursed, your eyes narrowed; all with low intensity. As if wondering what it was you were looking at, what it is I was._

 _Haymitch wasn't surprised after I explained to him that we'd become so close at 13. 'Figures.' He tilted his head to the right._

 _Your unwillingness to come out of your living room surfaced. Peeta insists we ought to get you out. I differ. And Haymitch concurs simply because he's desperate to be back on Peeta's good side. He's desperate for the boy's friendship again. That is, if what he had with him or with you could ever be considered friendship._

 _That word's troubled me all day. Friendship. Earlier I wondered if we were ever friends, you and I. Somehow it seems to me as if we never actually were. What is a friend, indeed I wonder._

 _I don't agree with them because I think we all know how we want to live our lives. If Haymitch wants to be a drunk, so be it. If Peeta wants to think he can help others, let him try. If I want to drown myself in hope and sorrow, I will. If you want to spend the rest of your life on your own, so you will._

 _I hope you won't. I know you won't. You wouldn't just give up; it's not like you. You're too stubborn, I think. My theory is, you need your time to mourn. And it shouldn't be interrupted._

 _'Peeta's got a plan,' Haymitch called today, right before I left. At the doorway I stopped and turned to him. I inquired, a plan for what? 'Getting her out,' he said._

 _'Good luck with that,' I muttered._

 _'He wants you with us.' I glared at him. They think, he claimed, that the more of us that insist the better. The more likely it is you'll want to try. 'Weeks before you came I hear she actually went out; to the woods, even.' Haymitch was thoughtful as he spoke. 'I saw her come back with some men from town. Miners. They helped her in, left her at that couch, I imagine.' He shook his head. 'I haven't seen her since.'_

 _Haymitch's been locked up too. Peeta doesn't care about him, but he hasn't got out of his kitchen. So I asked him, 'You going out too?'_

 _It's what he answered that made me write this. 'For her? Of course, sweetheart.'_

 _There's a thrill that's been bothering me. Seeing you again. Bringing you out. I would see you if you went out. If we make you overcome your grief. I still don't think it's fair to make you, but I would want to take advantage if we succeeded._

 _I'm trying to decide whether or not I want to participate. I want to see your reaction; and don't. I want you to hug me and cry as I hold you, to kiss me._

 _Peeta's also occupied my mind. He's everywhere I go, eternally bringing you up in conversation. He wonders why won't you listen to him. Why won't you look at him. I have seen him cry more than I would want to, more than I would like to admit. I have heard him lament your apparent mental demise._

 _He doesn't get it. Doesn't understand. And why would he? I don't understand either. I lost my family as he lost his, as Haymitch lost it all, and as you've lost it, too. But I think none of us feels like you do about our losses. Of us only you risked your life for them. For Prim. And they took her away._

 _I wish I knew what it feels like to love someone like that._

 _I wish I knew._

 _I wish…_

 _I write not because I don't yet know what I'll do. I do know. I'll talk to you. I'll tell you we need you as much as you need us. I'll tell you that if we want you to start living again is for our sake and not yours._

 _I'll kiss you._

 _Before walking out of his house I told him, 'We're around for her.'_

 _Haymitch made the connection I thought he would make. 'And she needs us,' he nodded._

* * *

 **And well. That's all there is to it. I don't see myself continuing any time soon. I just wanted to post this here so that my resume (if you can call it that) would be complete or whatever. It should be noticed that I haven't finished a lot of the long stories I've written, and that, since I hate so much to post them incomplete, I usually delete them from my profiles. This is one of those stories I haven't completed, but it's kind of special to me because it felt a little more earnest than my previous projects back when I wrote it and, regardless of the fact that it's incomplete, I feel quite satisfied with it.**

 **Anyway. Hope you liked it and, please, —**

 _ **Review!**_


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